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CONFOUNDED TRADITIONAL TREES. "The tree structure is currently the accepted paradigm to represent evolutionary relationships between organisms, species or other taxa. However, horizontal, or reticulate, genomic exchanges are pervasive in nature and confound characterization of phylogenetic trees." https://lnkd.in/dkR5NBx View in LinkedIn

AIDS STAR. "The phylogeny of HIV provides a good example of a star-like tree, as the prevalence of HIV infection rose rapidly throughout the 1980s." https://lnkd.in/dDjCWve View in LinkedIn

CLONAL SMALL POPULATIONS. "Star-like trees arise because viruses are more likely to share a recent common ancestor when the population is small, and a growing population has an increasingly smaller population size towards the past." https://lnkd.in/dDjCWve View in LinkedIn

NEW CLASS OF GENES. "Noncoding regulatory RNAs, such as miRNAs, are a recently discovered class of genes, and the number of miRNA genes that exist among eukaryotic genomes is very much an open question. Many miRNA genes are evolutionarily conserved and may have functional orthologs in multiple species." https://lnkd.in/dmzSnGT View in LinkedIn

NEW STAR TREES. "Rapid expansion of a virus in a population will be reflected by a “star-like” tree, in which external branches are long relative to internal branches." https://lnkd.in/dDjCWve View in LinkedIn

MASSIVE REGULATORS. "Micro-RNAs (miRNAs) represent a class of small non-coding RNAs (typically 19–23 nucleotides) which act by annealing to partially complementary binding sites present on the 3' untranslated regions (UTR) of messenger RNAs (mRNAs) leading to inhibition of protein translation or by inducing mRNA decay. In mammals, miRNA regulate tissue-specific protein expression and are involved in virtually all cellular processes. Up to one-third of mammalian mRNAs are susceptible to miRNA-mediated regulation." https://lnkd.in/dRP_E_K View in LinkedIn

PAST BIASES. "Patterns of viral genetic variation will also be affected by selection acting on viral phenotypes. Although viruses can differ with respect to many phenotypes, phylodynamic studies have to date tended to focus on a limited number of viral phenotypes." https://lnkd.in/dDjCWve View in LinkedIn

DEAR READERS, your readership of my posts proves that you have an appetite for deeply technical subjects that are not dumbed-down, in a world of sound-bites and diluted science. This has been a test balloon to see how far you will go, and has surpassed my greatest expectations. This is a high-flying biological-themed journal club. Thank you all, as I love doing this!! View in LinkedIn

ULTRA-QUICK GENERATION TIMES. "Many viruses, especially RNA viruses, rapidly accumulate genetic variation because of short generation times and high mutation rates. Patterns of viral genetic variation are therefore heavily influenced by how quickly transmission occurs and by which entities transmit to one another." https://lnkd.in/dDjCWve View in LinkedIn

NOVEL REGULATORY MECHANISMS. "Recent studies, in many cases using quantitative trait loci (QTL)-mapping approaches in cell lines or tissue samples, have provided us with considerable insight into the properties of genetic loci that have regulatory roles. Such studies have uncovered novel biochemical regulatory interactions and led to the identification of previously unrecognized regulatory mechanisms." https://lnkd.in/dFv6Tsi View in LinkedIn